Daddy's Eyes
by Nonchey Niente
Summary: A potential tear-jerker, with a bit of a twist to the end..


The Dead Zone and its Characters are the property of Mr Stephen King and the USA television network.

This piece of fiction was created purely for amusement. It came originally from an idea of MidnightRaven's, based on the song "Daddy's Eyes" by James Lee Stanley.

I am grateful to Raven for letting me pick up the baton.

Sarah Bannerman sat quietly on the front steps of her small house nursing a cup of coffee, watching as her son played in the front yard. The little boy was lying on his stomach, pushing his new toy - a scale model Chevvy convertible given to him by his father, through a patch of long grass and down a bare sandy slope where Walt had begun a landscaping job a few weekends ago and then, inevitably, got sidetracked. 

Little Johnny had just turned three years old, and Sarah couldn't believe how fast he was growing. Every day from the moment he woke up, he displayed an enormous appetite for all of life's new experiences as well as for food, growing out of clothes almost as fast as she could buy them. This was such a very stark contrast to his natural father, lying motionless, pale, and emaciated in a hospital bed. 

Three years, and she could still remember everything about his arrival as if it were yesterday. Older women kept on telling her that the memory of childbirth would eventually fade away, but Sarah was determined not to let that happen. Each moment of the birth process was carefully documented and filed away in her memory, looked at regularly. 

After 36 hours of labour, the baby had finally arrived. To Sarah, drugged and barely sensible, it had seemed like a further age before the baby was cleaned up and Walt placed him in her waiting arms. Instantly, to the satisfaction and delight of the midwives, the baby had started rooting for her milk with an intensity that was just a foretaste of his appetite for life. 

Sarah had seen Johnny only once since JJ had been born - in the week before her marriage to Walt. She had braved the familiar and depressing atmosphere of the long-term care hospital one final time; to face her demons, to ask forgiveness and ultimately to say goodbye. 

On that last visit to the hospital, she had sat by John's bed for six and a half hours, after she had read that it was not uncommon in coma patients for their eyes to flicker open and stare unfocussed and lifeless into the middle distance for a few seconds. Sarah had realised that she was desperate for some sign of life from him, and so she had waited, ignoring the aches in her lower back from her advanced pregnancy. If John Smith had shown her the slightest sign of life that night, she would have decided not to marry Walt Bannerman. The balance of the rest of her life lay in Johnny's eyes. She called on what little was left of her faith in God and asked for a simple sign. So she waited. Open your eyes, Johnny....please, Johnny.....please.. 

And waited. 

In vain. 

Unusually for a newborn, Johnny Junior had his eyes open right from the very start, as though eager to see what the world had to offer him. Looking down at the precious little bundle of brand new life in her arms, Sarah was captivated by the intensity of those blue eyes. Almost all babies had blue eyes of course, and there was no guarantee that after a couple of years they might not slowly turn through the colours to browny green like her own. 

Sarah's memories flashed back and forth through the years in no particular order. His father's eyes. Just looking into those limpid blue depths brought so much back for Sarah. The residual pain of childbirth seemed somehow insignificant compared to the agony of loss she felt. How she had wished Johnny could have been there at that moment. To see their little boy. He had been so desperate to become a dad, to somehow make up for the fact that his own father had died when he was only five. And now....? 

The baby stared back at her, uncannily as though he could understand what was going through her head. 

Sarah remembered Johnny's mother calling her, hysterical, to tell that Johnny had been in an accident. The anxious waiting while he laboured in surgery. The prognosis was that he would probably never recover, the desolation of finding out she was pregnant coupled with the grinding fear of raising that child alone. 

Sarah could feel the sting of tears welling up in her own eyes as she thought about how many hours she had sat by Johnny's side, waiting for some sign that he might waken and be there for this moment. 

"Do you have a name for him?" the doctor asked. 

"Johnny," Walt had replied without any hesitation. This had been decided, but never mentioned, long ago. 

Three years ago, but it was still on her mind like it had happened yesterday. 

"Wha's matter, Mommy?" 

JJ was standing in front of her, a worried look on his young face. His eyes were wide with concern. 

Those eyes. Johnny's eyes. Daddy's eyes. 

"Nothing, sweetheart," she told him. 

"Why're you crying?" 

Sarah hadn't noticed, but when she brought a hand to her cheek, it was in fact streaked with tears. She quickly wiped them away and smiled at her son reassuringly, forcing a smile for her own sake as much as his. He was just beginning to reach the age where children learned empathy for others, and a grownup crying was a dangerous threat to the stability of his little world. 

"Oh, I was just remembering a friend," she told him. "Someone who's gone now." 

"OK," he replied, satisfied. He turned his attention back to his toy car. He raced it along a patch of sand before sending it crashing and tumbling down the incline. It finally came to rest, upside down, up against a flower bed. 

Every time she looked at him, she saw Johnny. She couldn't see him without remembering that horrible night that had stolen his real father away from her. She tried not to show her desolation to Walt and JJ because no matter what had gone before, she now loved them both very much. They filled up her world. She loved her son and her husband more than words could express, but in spite of that she sometimes still longed to have Johnny by her side to see what a little man their child had become. But fate, it seemed, had other plans for Johnny Smith… 

For a long time after Johnny's accident, Sarah had felt intense bitterness, as though God had something against her. How could He be so cruel as to rip Johnny away from her, but leave her with a constant reminder of him? But, as the years passed, Sarah knew that the resentment and bitterness would begin to fade, hopefully to be replaced with a sense of comfort that in some way at least, Johnny stayed with her. Sarah knew that no matter what, she would never forget Johnny Smith. 

She would always see him, whenever she wanted to, reflected there in the eyes of their son. 

vwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwv 

Three years had passed. An awful lot of water under an awful lot of bridges. 

The Bannerman household, normally peaceful at this time of a Saturday morning, was being torn apart by a series of gut-wrenching wails. 

Sarah remained relatively oblivious to the noise. Motherhood was not something you forget - despite what several older women had said to her soon after JJ's birth - and she found she slipped back into the old patterns from her sons babyhood quite easily whenever she looked after small children. She and Walt had often talked about having more children but somehow the time had not yet seemed right. So, in the meantime Sarah was content to pander to her mothering instincts with other people's children. Little Lewis had wind, that was all. Calmly she lifted the hysterical child and slung him over her shoulder, pacing up and down while rubbing firmly and methodically all over his taught little back. 

The doorbell rang. Sarah guessed it was Johnny, who had called earlier to see if it was convenient to return a book he had borrowed. Still patting the child's back in rhythm to her steps, Sarah went to answer the door. 

oioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioio 

"What's his name?" Johnny asked, looking over the side of the basket at the little boy. 

"Lewis Ramzy. Mary Beth Howzer's little boy - do you remember her?" 

Johnny looked on, captivated by the little boy's unflinching gaze. The enormous blue eyes held his own without blinking for several moments, establishing a strange bond. It was a nice feeling, once you got over the fear. Another human being was looking directly at him without making judgements, without sizing him up, or calculating what he might be worth to him; without wanting anything from him other than perhaps......love? Johnny remembered his mother saying that was all a baby really needed, love. Something that didn't change then, as you grew up. Acting on some ancient instinct to entertain the boy and endear himself further, Johnny pulled a face. His eyebrows lifted slowly up his forehead and his mouth split open into a grotesque parody of a smile, teeth bared. 

For a moment, he thought he might have overdone it. The child's face changed subtly and for a moment teetered on a precipice - about to fall either way - would it be tears, or laughter? Johnny glanced furtively at Sarah and then breathed a sigh of pure relief when the child's face broke into a broad smile of his own. His two chubby legs started kicking fiercely, throwing the blanket up and straight over the side of the Moses basket he was laid in. 

Leaning on his cane and stooping awkwardly to retrieve the blanket, Johnny was almost caught off balance by the start of his vision. His long fingers gripped the piece of material compulsively, his knuckles white, seeming to almost burst through the skin of the back of his hand as he fell helplessly out of one picture and into another........ 

A hospital. Oh, no. Hospitals were never good. 

A labour ward, judging by the notices on the wall and the high preponderance of worried looking men and very pregnant woman. 

Screaming. Johnny could hear desperate screaming. No one else in the corridor seemed to be aware of it, but the sound shot through John's head like a searing stream of hot lead. He crammed his hands over his ears and protect himself from the sound and the thought of what - or, more to the point - who - that screaming was coming from. 

His hands had no effect. It was as though the screaming was inside his head. Which of course, this being a vision, it was. 

He walked along the corridor, drawn inexorably towards the sound of screaming. It was inhuman, like nothing he had ever heard before. The act of creating one human being apparently involved the destruction of another. Terrified on some primal level but unable to resist, he was drawn forwards and through a closed door. He knew before he even saw her that the screams were coming from Sarah. 

The delivery room was not crowded. Sarah, in centre stage. Johnny's knowledge of paediatrics was necessarily rare, but he could tell that Sarah was in a very advanced stage of labour. In one corner of the room, unnoticed and seemingly uninvolved, stood Walt Bannerman. 

Johnny looked at him closely, trying to read his expression. But the Sheriff appeared impassive, unemotional. Johnny was at once astonished and enraged - how could he remain so distant from Sarah as she suffered? 

"Push down NOW Sarah," said one of the two women - midwives he presumed. She was firm but not overbearing. 

The vision ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving Johnny disorientated and confused, to put it mildly. He sat down heavily on the edge of JJ's little bed with the Simpsons bed linen. Louis had stopped kicking and started staring again, this time at a mobile suspended above his head that was moving gently, caught in the back draft from Johnny's sudden departure. 

"Right, I've warmed up his bottle now." Sarah came into the room and looked at Johnny, still recovering his composure, as he sat on the edge of JJ's bed. "Are you OK? Tell you what - why don't you feed him? He's a real easy child. Go on, give it a go!" 

Johhny held up both his hands, palms outwards, in protest "Oh, no I don't think...." 

Sarah ignored him, lifting Lewis and placing him squarely in Johnny's arms. She fussed over his blanket for a moment, then handed Johnny the warm bottle. "Look, I'll get him latched on then all you have to do is sit still." 

"What? What if I get a vision?" 

"So you get a vision! I'm right here! Sit back on the bed then you won't drop him on his head." 

"Maybe if I drop him on his head he can be the one to start getting visions and then I can retire," said Johnny ironically. He shook his head in genuine disbelief, but Sarah's confidence in him was contagious. Lewis began his drink, and Johnny began his next vision. 

This time, there was barely any perceptible transition. He was still sat in the same room, on the same bed, but the bedclothes were different. The light coming through the window was different. He was still holding a bottle of warm milk. And he was still holding a 6-month old baby boy. 

"Hey little man, you hungry?" he heard himself saying, looking down at his son. JJ, teat wedged firmly between his lips, made no sound other than a powerful rhythmic sucking noise. It was rather a satisfying noise - the sound of nurture. 

The vision faded away like the backwash of a wave on a sandy beach, soaking back down and away into the depths of reality. 

Desperate to regain that intimate moment with his own child, Johnny had to swallow hard several times to prevent himself from crying. Lewis felt the sudden tension in his body and wriggled uneasily, dislodging the bottle teat and sending milk dribbling perilously close to Johnny's immaculate black Levis. 

"You OK Johnny?" 

"Yeah. Could you take him, please. Sarah? Please, take the baby." 

Knowing he had had a vision but sensitive enough to see when she shouldn't ask, Sarah obediently took Lewis back. She sat in the rocking chair in one corner of the room and carried on feeding him. After a moment Johnny stood up and started wandering around the room. He had no desire to upset Sarah by telling her what he was doing so he adopted as casual a manner as he could muster. He was a tourist on vacation, with Bermuda shorts and a telephoto lens, sightseeing in his son's life. 

"I love babies," said Sarah suddenly but conversationally. She had never liked long silences and would always think of some way to fill them. Part of her hoped she could be able to manipulate the conversation and discover what Johnny's vision had been about. "I love the way they need you." 

"You don't find that a burden?" 

"Not really. I never have a baby around me long enough nowadays to find them burdensome." 

"Was JJ......was he a 'good' baby?" Johnny slid his lanky frame round the room, turning his back slightly in an effort to stop Sarah from seeing what he was doing. He reached his free hand to the top of the dresser and grasped a large and very ugly life-sized plastic iguana. Instantly he flashed downwards into a vision of JJ sat on the floor playing with the toy, enacting some ancient primeval battle between the iguana and Buzz Lightyear. The vision filled JJ's father with the same sense of joy that feeding the baby had done. It was addictive. But it was gone. Johnny felt the wrench and wondered if he should carry on actively seeking visions about his son's first years. He was desperate to know, but the pain...

Sarah, engrossed with Lewis, hadn't seen Johnny drift off into another realm for a moment. The baby had finished his bottle and was concentrating very hard indeed on some unspecific point on the wall behind Sarah. His little face was red, his mouth set in a tight line. 

"My God," said Johnny, suddenly alarmed. "Is he all right? What's the matter with his face?" 

Sarah giggled. 

"He's just filling his diaper, John. You know - 'in one end; out the other'?" She stood up, apparently oblivious to the look of horror on Johnny's face. He didn't need psychic abilities to guess what was coming next. "We'll give him a moment or two to finish and then we can change him before his nap." 

Johnny followed her reluctantly out of the bedroom "We....?" he said faintly. 

oioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioi 

Resplendent in his clean new diaper, Lewis burbled happily in his basket. Sarah watched him for a moment and then, satisfied that he was in fact about to drift off to sleep, left him alone. 

"Do you want some coffee?" 

"Uh, no thanks. Well, OK - yes please." 

Johnny was uncomfortable. He felt as though he really shouldn't be there - in Walt and Sarah's house, alone with her. Well, almost alone. But his curiosity about the earlier vision of Sarah having another baby was seriously piqued, and he knew he had to stay around for a bit longer if he was to unravel the mystery. 

"Cream and sugar?" 

Johnny stared at Sarah for a moment. How ironic. So much had happened in the last six years that Sarah had forgotten how he took his coffee. 

"Two, please." 

"There you go." 

"Thank you." Without thinking, instead of letting her set the cup down in front of him, he reached out and took it in both hands. As he did so, his fingers inadvertedly brushed the back of her hand, and another vision began. 

The labour room again. This vision started off right where the other had finished. By concentrating very hard indeed John was able to slow the action down as though working his video machine at home. The scene slowed, slowed, slowed....and froze. Cautiously Johnny edged between the motionless people until he was standing face to face with Walt Bannerman. Johnny peered at him. His face remained passionless and unmoved. In fact, Johnny thought he looked dead. 

He turned to Sarah next. Her face was flushed and damp from her exertions, her fine brown hair plastered over her forehead. Johnny resisted the temptation to reach out and smooth it away from her eyes, but only just. Her face was a snap shot of agony and determination. 

The movement started again, like a carousel beginning to turn slowly around and around, until the images were running at normal speed again. Horrified, mesmerised and helpless, Johnny stood to one side and watched Sarah in the final moments of giving birth. It was a very emotional experience. Once again Johnny was dumbfounded that Walt could just be *standing* there, playing no part at all........wait! 

Was that it? 

Was that the key? 

Did Walt in fact have no part in this baby? 

The smash of broken crockery and Sarah's cry of alarm broke through the screams of agony in his vision and brought Johnny abruptly back to the present. He had dropped the cup and broken it. There was coffee everywhere. 

"You're going to have a baby, Sarah, another baby. A little girl. But you have to know that....her cord - the umbilical cord. It's twisted round her neck. She won't be able to breathe. Blood won't get to her brain..." 

"When?" 

"I don't know...I don't know. Are you pregnant...?" 

"No." 

Sarah stared at Johnny with a mixture of horror at what he was telling her and compassion for the emotional torment that he was evidently suffering as a result. The coffee, forgotten, ran to the edge of the table and cascaded onto the tiled floor. 

After a long moment Sarah said one word. "Caesarean." 

"I beg your pardon?" 

Sarah was very calm. Almost too calm. "When the time comes, Johnny. I will have an elective Caesarean." 

"You can do that?" 

"Of course. You always told me I could do whatever I wanted." 

Johnny smiled, recovering slightly. His sense of relief was palpable. "That was because I knew you would, whatever I said!" 

They both smiled, enjoying the release from the tensions of a few moments ago. Sarah mopped up the spilt coffee, threw the shards into the trash, and poured a fresh cup. 

They sat, either end of the kitchen table, trying not to look at each other. That was how Walt and JJ found them a half hour later when they got back from soccer practice. Lewis was still sleeping in JJ's room. As soon as he could manage, Johnny excused himself and left. 

There was one part of his vision he had deliberately withheld from Sarah. It was something he had seen before in other visions, but which seemed to have been reinforced by what he saw this afternoon. Although he'd been unsure at first, by the time he waved goodbye and clambered stiffly into his Jeep, John Smith was certain. 

He was going to be a father again.


End file.
